SiliconBeat

SunPower, the San Jose maker of solar power chips, revealed in a filing Wednesday afternoon it signed a deal a week ago to supply at least 100 megawatts of solar panels and systems between 2009 and 2011 to City Solar Kraftwerke, a German developer of large-scale photovoltaic power plants.

Without supplying any financial details, SunPower stated that the agreement “is a material revenue opportunity.”

SunPower, the San Jose maker of electronic devices used in solar power systems, is getting a new chief financial officer, which is one way to announce its losing its current one. Dennis Arriola will begin work next month when he will “work closely with retiring CFO, Manny Hernandez,” the company said in a release today.

Hernandez (pictured), 52,  joined SunPower in 2005, but was previously an executive at Cypress Semiconductor, the company that spun off SunPower into a separate company in November of that year. SunPower chief executive Tom Werner announced Hernandez’s planned retirement in an earnings call with analysts on July 15.  At the end of August, however, Read the rest of this entry »

SunPower, the San Jose maker of chips used in solar-power systems, put out a press release Tuesday to address concerns about the impact of the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers, a co-underwriter of the company’s 2005 initial public offering as well as its numerous follow-on offerings of SunPower’s stock and debt.

In February 2007, SunPower lent Lehman 2.9 million shares of its common stock to enable the investment bank Read the rest of this entry »

The marketing folks at SunPower (along with its shareholders) must be salivating this morning after the San Jose maker of chips used in solar-power systems revealed in a press release that the U.S. Department of Energy has installed a 205-kilowatt SunPower solar-electric system on top of its Forrestal Building in Washingto n D.C. (Pictured is Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at the unveiling this morning of the installation, one of the largest solar power systems in Washington, D.C.)

In its release, SunPower says it’s PowerGuard solar-electric system was chosen for the DOE’s rooftop “because Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the board of directors at Cypress Semiconductor set up a committee that will be authorized to approve the distribution to its stockholders of the shares it owns of SunPower, the maker of chips used in the generation of solar energy that it spun out into a separate company in 2005.

The special committee is expected to approve the distribution after the Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review of SunPower’s preliminary information statement filed with the SEC on Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, Cypress Semiconductor sold 2.5 million shares of SunPower, the company it spun-off into a separate public entity in November 2005, reducing its ownership stake by 5.6 percent. Cypress continues to be SunPower’s single biggest stockholder, with 42 million shares, or 52.3 percent of SunPower shares outstanding, according to a filing with the SEC today.

The shares were sold to a private investor. The amount of the transaction was not detailed. SunPower shares rose 18 percent last Friday Read the rest of this entry »

In a possible sign of waning shareholder activism, SunPower successfully asked the owners of its stock to allow them to automatically increase the number of shares each year in the company’s employee stock plan without having to seek shareholder approval, according to a filing Wednesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Intevac, the Santa Clara supplier of equipment used to make data storage products and flat panel displays, said Citigroup agreed to supply it $20 million in credits secured by some of Intevac’s holdings in its Citigroup accounts, according to a filing with the SEC.

Like many companies looking for places to stash their cash, Intevac has made use of
investments known as auction-rate securities, which have been popping up in the news lately because of the lack of bidders at their auctions. ARS are typically corporate or municipal bonds with a long-term maturity horizon whose interest rates are reset periodically through auctions held as often as every week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday night, as we trolled through SEC filings from earlier in the day while listening to
primary election returns we came across an 8-K filing from SunPower reporting details of its newly adopted “Key Employee Quarterly Key Initiative Bonus Plan” (That’s what it’s called, honest).

Before our eyes glazed over we came across this non-sequitur news near the bottom: “effective as of January 31, 2008, PM Pai resigned as the Chief Operating Officer of the Company.”

Um, that seemed kinda “material” to us, especially for a company whose sales more than tripled last year, along with its stock price, as it took advantage of the mania for the solar energy systems in which its semiconductors are used. We assumed we’d missed a press release prior to this filing, but couldn’t find one on our Bloomberg box nor on SunPower’s Web site.

As part of his severance agreement, Pai is going “to provide certain services to the Company on a part-time basis through July 31, 2008 to facilitate the transition of responsibilities,” for which he’ll be paid $15,333 per month for the first three months and $13,800 per month for the last three months. SunPower will continue to pay Pai’s “existing level of housing and other expenses associated with his residence in the Philippines, and the Company will reimburse Mr. Pai for up to $25,000 of
relocation costs.”

Oh yeah, and “In exchange for a general release by Mr. Pai and his agreement to certain
non-competition and other conditions, the Company will pay him an additional $13,800.00 per month” for five months from August through December.

No reason was given for why Pai is leaving. We noticed that he exercised his option to buy 22,500 shares of SunPower for $3.30 each Jan. 30, the day before he quit, selling them the same day for $73.19, netting a $1.57 million profit. They closed Tuesday at $66.64.